For Wilshire Baptist ChurchA
I don’t have an answer to the gun violence. I have some opinions, but I don’t dare voice them because every opinion I read is followed by a long chain of slap downs and insults and I don’t want to contribute to that toxic mix. I have some ideas too, but ideas aren’t well received nowadays either. Everybody is angry.
More than angry, I’m disappointed and saddened by the current social environment in our nation. There are no verbal boundaries, no filters. Silence is no longer golden; loud and proud are the currencies of the day. This is not the country I was born into, but it is the country we have become. There are lots of reasons for that change, and the end result is ugly and sad.
It’s hard to know what to do about it. It’s easy to lob opinions into the bonfire and believe we’ve contributed. It’s also easy to say, “I can’t fix this,” and do nothing at all. What’s hard is to listen to one another and have civil conversations that lead to real solutions. We should all want an end to the violence. That, at the very least, should be a starting point — a place of common ground. The dreamer in me wants to believe that is true; the skeptic in me thinks there are profiteers out there stirring the pot.
I wish the solution was as easy as lighting candles, standing in circles, singing hymns and raising prayers. I wish it was as easy as calling for a national day of prayer or lowering the flags for a week and only raising our heads and our flags again when everyone has agreed to be civil. But the finger pointing and blame game always begins before the victims are even identified. The truth is we all are victims, and we all share the blame.
I wish I could open my Bible and find just the right verse that, if read out loud from the top of a tall building, would freeze everyone in their tracks and all would be convicted and everything would change. I think I know what that verse would be: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Yes, I know I’m naive. The solution seems so simple — just live those two verses, especially the second one — and yet it’s probably impossible because too many people just don’t seem to comprehend how precious and special is this one brief life that each of us has been given. There are moments when I can see it, feel it, taste it and I know I’m part of something bigger than myself. But then there are moments when all I can see is my own reflection in the mirror and I forget that we are, each of us, equal in the eyes of God.